Posted by mooreds 2 hours ago
Extremely cheeky to skip out on APA rulemaking requirements
The idea being that they could not discuss important matters privately but only when in the official committee discussions.
This included elevators so if one of them was about to get on and the other one was already there, the first person had to let the elevator go without them.
Once independent agencies are no longer independent, partly due to the expansion of the unitary executive viewpoint in both the Supreme Court and the current executive branch, and the rather obsequious Congress we have that instead of being “jealous to protect its power” is kowtowing to anything the Trump administration wants.
The supreme courts ruling on presidential immunity, chevron deference, and the dismantling of the ideas of an independent agency have all come together to create a dangerous situation for all of us.
The Supreme Court, whether because the of their own alignment with partisanship or some other more nefarious reason, have gutted the idea of an independent agency (except for the Federal Reserve, which is special, but not for any legal reason, but rather because even conservative SCOTUS is not willing to risk the fallout of logically applying their unitary executive view of government to the Fed).
So Congress put a lot of regulatory power in these once independent and non-partisan agencies, and that’s gone. Combine that with a president that is overtly partisan and vindictive, and you have a problem where SCOTUS has created a situation that has elevated the whims of a president above the law Congress created.
We will be feeling the affects of this decision for generations, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the catalyst for the failure of the American form of government.
Our system cannot sustain when coequal branches of government kowtow to politics.
There are newer law review articles but none quite so comprehensive and earnest as Cass R. Sunstein & Lawrence Lessig, "The President and the Administration," 94 Columbia Law Review 1 (1994), https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles/7779/
That's the same Lawrence Lessig who fought (and lost) copyright extension. 1994 is long before tribal politics became as pervasive and extreme in academia as it is today (not that it didn't exist back then). The paper pulls its punches and assumes unitary executive proponents are arguing in good faith, rather than rationalizing a foregone conclusion.
And while I agree we don’t want the DoJ treated that way, that’s how it’s been operated since its beginnings! If anything the past few decades have been relatively not so bad. And regardless of what I want that doesn’t answer whether it would be within Congresses power to make it independent of the President.
To whom? The U.S. Constitution says that Congress has the power
"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
The legislative branch makes those laws and the executive branch executes them. Beyond that its role is limited ... commander-in-chief of the military, pardon power, making treaties (with approval of the legislature), appointing ambassadors, judges, and other officers (with approval of the legislature).
The best distillation of our current conundrum I've heard is that our framers architected a system where the branches of government would compete (i.e. protect their power) against each other. Today, we have people in each branch willing to forego their own branch's power in exchange for greater party power.
> The Commission is modifying 17 CFR 200.41, which establishes the Commission's quorum requirement. Three commissioners will continue to constitute a quorum of the Commission, with two important exceptions. First, consistent with the current rule, if the number of commissioners in office is two or one, that number is sufficient for a quorum. Second, if the number of commissioners in office minus the number disqualified from consideration with respect to a matter is two or one, then that number of commissioners constitutes a quorum for purposes of that matter.
This new rule means that the president only have to get one of "his" guys in, and now you can own all of the SEC decisions if you want by just firing any dissenting commissioners.
In the past, that is the sort of norm that would not be broken. We are now in a world where the president trying to fire fed bankers is real, and that is arguably a much, much, more serious norm to have broken. I don't think this administration will have any issues playing to the letter of the law instead of the spirit.
So with this rule change, the effect is that a president only needs one commissioner and a lack of regard for norms to completely control SEC decisions.
May as well go the full nine yards: "The Enabling Act 2026 appears to actually just be an edit to a .docx file. Hmm... My aloofness is a sign of my intelligence."
This is why we need the humanities. I remember one of my application essays to my university was on the merits of a “Liberal Education”[1] and I’m very grateful that I was able to properly receive one from my institution.
Luckily enough, the Supreme Court has given the administration the green light to fire members of commissions at will... save the Fed, because mumble mumble history and tradition mumble.
Definitely has nothing to do with SCOTUS's retirement accounts, no sir.
Who needs retirement accounts when you can just accept gifts-do-not-call-them-bribes?
* https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-un...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas#Nondisclosure_...
But my second was: "Oh, no, maybe this is just more targeted ignorance"
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/02/2026-20...
The FCC is set up for this same tactic. 2 vacancies, so down to the minimum quorum there right now. They can change the rule and let Anna Gomez's term expire. Suddenly we'll be reviewing everyone's licenses and seeing all the TV and radio content becoming more right-wing.
Already happening. Also, I support diversity in media without regards to ideology because diversity in media increases the peoples' power and freedom against the ownership and political power classes.
The solution? A bunch of the other countries in the WTO just got together and made their own appellate body without the US, and presumably with blackjack and hookers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellate_Body#History
To this day the WTO is still partially nonfunctional and the stop-gap is still being used.
fuck dang with a rusty cactus, in retaliation for giving me a rate limit
A bunch of those countries will have signed national laws and international treaties deferring to the WTO which can't just be updated without renegotiating. And changing the WTO itself would require simultaneous unanimous agreement from all countries besides the USA.